Can you imagine the second half of the "Harry Potter" saga without Ron Weasley? J.K. Rowling apparently did, at least briefly.

The author says that midway through the phenomenally successful series of novels, when she "wasn't in a very happy place," she for a short time thought about killing Harry's best friend and Hermione's true love, played by Rupert Grint in the movies based on her books.

Rowling says her initial plan -- the one she ended up sticking with -- was for all three lead characters to survive the entire series.

"Then midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn't in a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off," she tells Radcliffe. "Out of sheer spite: 'There, now you definitely can't have him anymore.' But I think in my absolute heart of heart of hearts, although I did seriously consider killing Ron," she couldn't have cast the killing curse.

The "Harry Potter" books got successively darker as the series progressed, and Rowling was not shy about having important characters die. But if she had gone through with Ron's demise, things would have gone really, really dark. We suspect the fan outcry would have been louder than just about any other we've ever heard.